No confidence motion put against Scarborough Borough Council Leader
It's been called in Independent Roxanne Murphy of Seamer ward who wants an extraordinary meeting
A no confidence motion has been put forward against the leader of Scarborough Borough Council.
It has been called in by Independent Roxanne Murphy of Seamer ward who wants an extraordinary meeting of full council.
She says there has been a lack of open and transparency from Steve Siddons and she believes there are serious safeguarding issues that needs addressing.
Roxanne said:
"I feel during the pandemic he was nowhere to be seen. It was his deputy who we were continuously hearing from and that's not leading a council. When we as councillors have grave and serious concerns we would expect those to be addressed and to have the support from our leader and that's not happening.
"We've been told that the motion has not been accepted on the safeguarding issue, that we aren't allowed to have one as it may put the council in a legal position that they don't want to be in. I don't know but this is about the councillors not the officers. This is about the councillors saying we want to debate this so let us debate it.
"I have sent a reply saying that I believe this is absolutely fine to be debated and we should be allowed to debate this and to go to the extraordinary meeting. I feel that it's very much smoke and mirrors at the moment and that they're trying to kick it into the long grass but this isn't going to go away.
"It was at the last planning meeting when there were remarks made to another councillor and to the general public that were quite frankly disgraceful and disgusting and especially as a woman, young mother, and in light of everything that's going on in the country this is something we should be debating.
"Yes we're a council, yes we all have opposing views but a leader's job is to try and unite, bring together and promote healthy debate and he's not doing that. The lack of communication and burying your head in the sand over things and hoping that they'll go away is not being a leader.
"Currently the debate that has been in there has not been healthy. It's been toxic. There's been poor decision making that the public don't want and we have to start listening to the public. They are the people that elected us and we have to listen to them and when they tell us they don't want something, it's not for us to tell them that they're wrong. It's for us to listen and have a healthy debate, which is currently not happening."
She says the authority told her they accept an open and transparency motion though, just not a safeguarding one.
A Scarborough Borough Council spokesperson said:
“Any agenda item accepted for debate at full council, which includes motions that may be proposed by councillors, are always published on our website.
“No full council agendas have yet been published for 2022.”